The Fitbit API

I love Fitbit. The product is great, the team is great, and I’m psyched to be an investor. I’ve been a user for a while – my data is public – but I just recently started using the food tracker which is superb. The only thing that was missing for me was an API.

Fitbit released the Fitbit API quietly a month or so ago. I’ve encouraged them to make more noise as some great applications are coming out. I use two of them – Earndit and the Fitbit Low Battery Notifier by Joshua Stein. There are a bunch more coming but I thought I’d encourage any of you out there who care about human instrumentation to take a look and consider integrating with Fitbit.

And, if you want the best fitness and sleep tracking product in the universe, go take a look at the Fitbit.

I was just wishing for a low-battery-notifier app for the fitbit last week when I heard about the API, so awesome that someone has already created one!

http://twitter.com/LDEakman LD Eakman

I like the fitbit but want more robust data from it. I really want a heart rate monitor and better monitoring on my Iphone.

http://www.feld.com bfeld

Both coming this year!

http://www.ezuku.com Pbarber

For those of us who are pretty sure we have sleep apnea, but don’t want the official diagnosis (pre-existing condition, and all), if fitbit could figure out a simple way to prevent me from rolling over on my back after falling asleep on my side, it would be worth its weight in gold.

When it comes to the best fitness and sleep tracking product in the universe, you know I will have to politely disagree on this one.

http://twitter.com/eriksquared Erik Engstrom

The other Erik and I spent fourteen days last month on a 1,000-1,200 calorie diet. I lost just under a pound a day for the first seven days, paused for a day or two, then lost another five pounds the remaining five days. I’m a pretty serious cook so I designed a set of 300-450 calorie snacks and meals then prepared 28 portions in advance and sealed each portion in a FoodSaver.

I’ve regained almost two pounds going back to a normal diet and I’ll be looking at Fitbit at some point later this year when I’m down to my target weight of 170. (Started at 206). Being short and a former muscle guy, keeping aware of daily weight differences is very important – such as being able to attribute healthy eating to effective weight loss is key to sustaining a healthy lifestyle.

Good luck to everyone working to stay healthy and reduce the unhealthy burden we put on our bodies.

http://www.facebook.com/danielrtodd Daniel Todd

I bought one of these and it stopped functioning due to moisture within 4 days. It took a little while but they sent me a replacement which experienced the same failure within a few weeks. I really liked using the product, but I gave up after the second failure and just assumed that it couldn’t handle sports like basketball and squash. I wish it could!

http://www.feld.com bfeld

It should be able to. I run with mine and I sweat more than anyone I know.
Email me (brad@feld.com) and I’ll connect you up with the company to get a
replacement. They also analyze the ones that come back so if another one
breaks it’s super useful to them to look at it and understand why.

I gave my Fitbit to a Ph.d friend who is now doing his neurosurgery residency as he’d lost a ton of weight and was pretty sure he was waking/running at least 5-6 miles a day. Turns out he’s doing over 12! The data is cool and he loves the thing!

http://www.feld.com bfeld

Awesome! Sounds like you need another one.

http://www.facebook.com/jeffrodanski Jeff Rodanski

I love my Fitbit! I just added Earnit and will try it out for a few weeks. I love the Earndit concept but their UI and UX is really weak and that might be a show stopper for me!

http://twitter.com/melemmer mary lemmer

When will (or will) the FitBit be able to track biking/cycling activity?

http://www.studentswithpatents.com Richard Weisberger

Not only is it a great product but, if you have a health savings account, you can make a claim for reimbursement. With all the time we spend in the car, i think we need a fatbit that tells us just how fit we could be, if we just would have walked.